RIM Plays Defense as Snowden Leaks Touch BlackBerry

The BlackBerry Q10 smartphone is available in the U.S. today at T-Mobile.

The turmoil surrounding leaks from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden engulfed Research In Motion Ltd. Monday, after Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported British intelligence services spied on foreign politicians and intercepted phone calls and emails from their BlackBerrys at two political summits in 2009.

“We remain 100 percent confident in the superiority of BlackBerry mobile security,” the company said after the report.

RIM has managed to stay out of the news cycle involving leaks from Mr. Snowden about an alleged, wide-ranging effort by the U.S. and Britain to collect data on calls and Internet exchanges. RIM wasn’t on a leaked list of companies that U.S. government officials indicated had cooperated in the effort. That gave it (and Twitter, which also wasn’t named) a bit of distance from the recent fallout.

But the Guardian, citing fresh documents leaked by Mr. Snowden, reported Monday that British intelligence agency GCHQ was able to “penetrate the security of BlackBerry smartphones” to gain access to advance copies of briefings for government ministers, for example.

While there was no indication that BlackBerry was complicit, it may dent the company’s reputation for super security among corporate clients and governments. One of RIM’s Network Operating Centers–a key conduit for global BlackBerry traffic–is in the U.K.

In one of the leaked slides obtained by the Guardian, titled “BlackBerry at G20,” the GCHQ notes that one of its “successes” was tapping into the BlackBerrys of foreign officials at the 2009 G20 summit to read their emails and provide “timely information to UK ministers.”

BlackBerrys have long been considered by analysts more secure than other smartphones because it runs emails through a proprietary network of servers. RIM says it’s impossible for it to see data from clients, because it’s the corporate and government customers themselves that have the encryption keys.

“We remain 100 percent confident in the superiority of BlackBerry mobile security for clients using our integrated device and enterprise server technology,” a RIM spokesman said in a statement. “Our public statements and principles have long underscored that there is no ‘back door’ to secure BlackBerry Enterprise Solutions.” It declined to comment further on the Guardian report.

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